Category: Feature

Justice League: the best TV series nobody watched

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It’s been a long time coming for the new Justice League movie in theaters now. There was an attempt at creating a live-action Justice League TV series in 1997 that was filmed but never aired, and then George Miller of Mad Max fame very nearly got a film version of Justice League off the ground in 2007 but for various reasons this movie was cancelled just before cameras rolled. It wasn’t until now, with the latest incarnation of the DC movie universe, that this newest Justice League finally made it to the big screen.

While this Justice League might be the biggest, most notable and most expensive version of Justice League, there was another long-running animated Justice League series that aired from 2001 to 2006 that was one of the best superhero TV series of all time. But since most adult viewers shun animation that doesn’t air Sunday nights on FOX, I’m guessing most viewers, even ones who dig superheroes and comic books, never checked out this show.

Justice League, then Justice League: Unlimited was created by animator Bruce Timm and Paul Dini of Batman: The Animated Series fame and aired on Cartoon Network. Characters like Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, Martian Manhunter and Hawkgirl all team up to do battle with villains too tough for any one of them to beat on their own.

And, to be honest, there’s been a million and one of these sorts of animated series — one was even a proto-Justice League show called Super Friends that ran in the 1970s and 1980s. Good guys vs bad guys where the good guys always win and the bad guys always go home crying. Except not in the 21st century Justice League. This series was written with such an adept hand that the characters in the show felt like they had real emotions and were real people. And when one of them, I won’t spoil things, turns out to be a traitor and sells the Earth out to alien invaders the pain that I felt for what had happened was real.

I didn’t think that an animated series could have been better than Justice League. That was until the spin-off series Justice League: Unlimited began airing soon after Justice League.

Let’s put it this way, Justice League was great, but it looks like a warm-up exercise when compared with Justice League: Unlimited.

Here, after this invasion there aren’t just a few superheroes in the Justice League, there are literally hundreds. And they orbit the Earth in a massive station to prevent other attacks on the planet before they can happen. The focus shifts a bit from just characters like Superman and Wonder Woman to include the likes of Green Arrow, Captain Atom, Hawk and Dove (brothers who are brilliantly played by Wonder Years TV brothers Fred Savage and Jason Hervey), Black Canary and Huntress to name a few.

Things are going great for the League since they’re able to respond to any crisis on Earth almost instantly from their station in orbit. Except when some of the people on Earth begin realizing that these protectors from above might easily become oppressors if anything should ever change they begin forming plans to eliminate the League if the need ever arises. People like Amanda Waller creates a governmental superhero team of her own Task Force X aka the Suicide Squad to keep tabs on what’s going on up in space. Much of this plot turned up in the movie Suicide Squad a few years back that I can only assume originated here.

When the end came for Justice League: Unlimited it came quickly and without warning — and on a cliffhanger no less! The show had always had its fans but was never a huge hit so when Justice League: Unlimited was finished after two seasons I can’t say I was surprise. Disappointed, yes. But not surprised.

Don’t get me wrong, I know a lot of people enjoy the live-action superhero TV series that airs on TV these days. But when it comes to story and writing, I don’t think these shows can hold a candle to either Justice League or especially Justice League: Unlimited. Let’s just hope that the story of the new Justice League movie is able to come close.

Currently, both Justice League and Justice League: Unlimited are available on Blu-ray, DVD, and digital download.

Direct Beam Comms #101

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVPosted on

TV

Damnation

The new USA series Damnation has a lot going for it. From its setting of a 1930s rural America to the production design to the characters there’s a lot to like about this show. However, after the first episode I was unclear as to what the overall story was. Oh, and Damnation might have the highest body count of any series in memory.

One thing — there’s a big spoiler here in my review. However, it’s not much a surprise in the show as I knew it was coming the minute the episode started. But you were warned…

In Damnation, preacher Seth Davenport (Killian Scott) is helping to lead a strike where farmers are keeping their goods from the local towns until they start getting a fair price for their products. Enter Creeley Turner (Logan Marshall-Green), a “cowboy” brought into the area to break-up the strike who shoots first and asks questions later.

Are Davenport and wife really “reds” like the local business community thinks? Or do they want something else entirely? The big surprise here is, you guessed it, after they’re attacked in their home one night and end up killing the assailants, Davenport’s not really a priest. He’s really a wanted murderer who’s known for causing strife and unrest wherever he goes.

Which left me a bit confused. Are Davenport and wife on the side of the farmers, or do they have other motives? On the one hand it seemed as if they were with the strikers, but then again Davenport’s already killed someone once before, and he stabs to death one man and shoots another in this episode. So I’m not sure?

It doesn’t help that just about every character in the show has a psychopathic dark side and isn’t too afraid to show it. Be it Turner shooting a farmer in the head in front of a dozen witnesses, Davenport letting a guy bleed to death or detective Connie Nunn (Melinda Paige Hamilton) shooting a bunch of strikers to incite violence in order for the county to be able to call in the national guard. There’s really no moral center to the show in Damnation.

I think a series like Deadwood is probably the closest amalgam to Damnation. And in Deadwood there were lots and lots of bad people. But there were good people as well and people who were somewhat good and somewhat bad. In Deadwood I never got the sense that a character like Seth Bullock (Timothy Elephant) had any bad intents for any of the other characters there. Seth was a bit unhinged and was apt to fly off at the handle and you might get hurt in the cross-fire, but Seth’s intentions were always good and he was never out to hurt anyone who wasn’t going to hurt him first. In Damnation it seems like practically everyone’s out to hurt everyone else first at the slightest provocation.

And that body count… there’s probably ten people killed in the first episode of the show. Which is a big number for something like Damnation that takes place in a relatively small city of a small population. My guess is that the idea behind all this killing was to show that the stakes of Damnation were high. Instead if anything it was too extreme and makes the act of killing or characters dying in this show seem ordinary and commonplace.

The Others – Gone too Soon

The Others, which originally ran on NBC in 2000, was doubly unlucky for a TV series. At the time NBC had been running a few successful paranormal shows in the dead-zone that’s Saturday night programming which included The Pretender and Profiler to which The Others joined in 2000. The first unlucky thing that happened with The Others was the XFL. NBC decided to axe their entire Saturday night lineup since Saturday nights was for the XFL. Needless to say this was a bad decision by NBC since the XFL quickly crashed and burned leaving them with a hole in their schedule with all their previous shows, including The Others, cancelled.

The second unlucky thing to happen with The Others was that there was a successful film of the same name starring Nicole Kidman released in 2001. That movie essentially has erased any mention of the TV series from the web because of its popularity. Try searching for The Others online and most of what you’ll find are mentions of this 2001 film.

The TV series The Others was kind’a The X-Files crossed with The Sixth Sense by way of group therapy where the members who meet each week all have special paranormal powers. Lead character Marion (Julianne Nicholson) can see dead people, where others can pick up on other people’s feelings or communicate psychically. And together this group explores the weird goings on around them. Whereas The X-Files always had a black hard edge The Others always had a bit of softness and light to it.

Episodes of The Others would deal with things like the group trying to figure out if a particular airline flight is cursed, a fake psychic who needs help when he begins to really read people’s minds and a season-long story about a mysterious evil that’s stalking the group.

The good thing about The Others was that 13 episodes of the series were produced and all 13 episodes did air on NBC. And the series does turn up from time to time on cable and satellite outlets. The bad thing was that it’s never been released on DVD since the series debuted just before that became popular/profitable for the networks to do. And since The Others is all but forgotten because of the 2001 movie and because it only ever had 13 episodes it’s never turned up on any streaming services as far as I’m aware.

Episodes do exist on YouTube so if you’re bored some Sunday afternoon you could do worse than checking out The Others.

Movies

Movie cliches I wish would go away

  • During fights, everyone knows karate and every fight is long, looks planned out and no one ever gets tired while fighting. This worked in The Matrix where everyone did know kung-fu, but in real life fights aren’t as choreographed as they are in movies.
  • Extras walk out doors or especially elevators just when characters from a movie need to walk into them. It means these main characters never have to pause to open a door or wait for an elevator to get to their floor.
  • As long as a character is in the dark in terms of plot, they can’t be hurt. I call this “ignorance is bliss.” In horror movies no one ever dies until they realize the killer might be in the same room they’re in or they see the killer just before he strikes.
  • Characters who die the minute their usefulness is up. This happens a lot in military movies where some side character will deliver some information, then almost immediately be killed by the enemy to show the seriousness of the situation they’re all in. Except since it’s the side character who dies, it usually shows just the opposite.
  • Along with the above, people who are shot and die immediately. It’s rare in most movies for a character to receive a wound and spend hours if not days suffering before they die which is what sometimes happens in real life. In movies, they die immediately, and with their eyes closed.

  • Characters walking away nonchalantly from massive explosions behind them. This looked cool the first time it was done but now it just looks lame. These characters would be burned by the heat of the explosions, let alone the flames.
  • Characters who are searching for some piece of information in a stack of papers and accidentally, or purposely, knock the papers onto the floor. And when they bend down to clean up the mess miraculously find the exact information they’re looking for.
  • Bad guys who can’t shoot straight or are bad soldiers. Think of the Storm Troopers in Star Wars. They’re professional, trained soldiers for the Empire who’ve helped take over the galaxy for the bad guys, yet when they shoot at the good guys they almost alway miss yet when the good guys shoot at them they cut them down like grass.

The Reading & Watch List

This week in pop-culture history

  • 1973: Radha Mitchell, Fry of Pitch Black is born
  • 1975: A Boy and His Dog opens
  • 1977: Close Encounters of the Third Kind premiers in theaters
  • 1982: Creepshow opens in theaters
  • 1984: Night of the Comet opens
  • 1987: The Running Man opens
  • 1990: The mini-series IT premiers on TV
  • 1994: Star Trek: Generations opens in theaters

Direct Beam Comms #100

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVPosted on

TV

S.W.A.T.

My familiarity with the S.W.A.T. franchise is relatively limited. I saw, and remember liking the 2003 feature film that starred Colin Farrell, Samuel L. Jackson and Jeremy Renner about a Los Angeles S.W.A.T. team who has to transport a drug kingpin across the city where every bad guy in town wants to set him free. But I’ve never seen the 1970s TV series that movie was based on nor the follow-up S.W.A.T. movies either.

Still, I went into the new CBS S.W.A.T. series with an open mind as I try to do with everything I watch.

Starring a scowling/frowning Shemar Moore – TV’s Vin Diesel – as Daniel ‘Hondo’ Harrelson, this new S.W.A.T. takes place in a very modern LA where police offers are often judged by decisions they have to make in an instant. Which, because of the sensitivity of the issues being tackled in S.W.A.T like police shooting unarmed civilians needs to be handled with a delicate touch. Of which S.W.A.T. approaches with the delicate touch of a sledge hammer.

The Los Angeles of S.W.A.T. is a crazy, hyperkinetic city where the criminals battle it out with police using machine guns and RPGs while the S.W.A.T. Officers, who sometimes seem like the only police in the city, must deal with said RPGs one day and police involved shooting protestors the next. Things are about to boil over to riots when Hondo decides to treat the people “like family” and everything’s okay which allows them to go after the real machine-gun toting bad guys.

S.W.A.T. is a sort of cross between the police TV procedural and The Fast and the Furious movies where when the S.W.A.T. team aren’t involved in firefights, climbing on roofs or riding to work on motorcycles going 100 miles per hour they’re making out with their girlfriends who look like gorgeous models.

What I liked about S.W.A.T. didn’t involve the story. Some of the photography in the series was gorgeous, especially the stuff that was shot at night. It didn’t look like the typical stuff shot at night that turns up on TV. This was different. It was less about setting up lights to shoot everything than it was about using the cameras to capture the weird qualities of what it’s really like to be outside in a city at night. Where some things are in the shadows and some are not with the sky casting a weird glow.

Side-note — S.W.A.T. has to be the show with the most amount of people climbing on roofs I’ve ever seen. I don’t mean people already on roofs, I mean people climbing from the ground over things to get onto roofs. At least twice in the show cops and bad guys start off on the ground, climb up fences and onto roofs to run across roofs to jump down to the other side. I don’t know why I noticed this? Maybe the first time they did it was neat, but the second time I kind’a wondered if they were running out of ideas.

Things TV lovers don’t have to worry about today that fans of the past did

I was thinking the other week about all the rigmarole fans of TV, myself included, used to have to go through to watch their favorite shows. Even just a few years ago before the advent of streaming services and a decade or so back before the ubiquitousness of the DVR it could be a pain to watch your favorite series if it aired at an odd time or alongside something else you wanted to watch even more. So I decided to put together a list of things I used to have to worry/think about when I wanted to watch my favorites shows.

  • You generally needed to make an appointment to watch TV. If what you wanted to see was on at 8 on Monday, you needed to be in front of the TV at 8 on Monday to watch it.
  • And you usually turned over early to watch your show. So if you wanted to see, say, Space Rangers on CBS you might turn over a little early and catch the tail-end of Major Dad every week whether you were a fan of Gerald McRaney or not.
  • Sometimes you had to stay up late or, like I did to watch the series Robotech, get up early to catch a show.
  • I never did this myself, but I’ve heard of people setting alarms in the middle of the night in order to get up to watch a certain movie they’d always wanted to see or hadn’t seen in years.
  • You sometimes had to tape over some program you’ve already watched but maybe wanted to keep for future viewings in order to record something new if you didn’t have, or couldn’t afford, a new tape.
  • Having to budget money for tapes when a pack of them cost $20.
  • If you missed an episode of a particular program you seriously didn’t know if you’d ever see it again.
  • You sometimes had to pick one show over another if they happened to air opposite one and other. You’d pray that the show you didn’t watch survived long enough for repeats of it to air over the summer when TV networks re-ran all their series. Otherwise you might never see that series again.
  • Waiting for your favorite show to start Sunday nights when football was running long and seeing and hearing the dreaded, “We join your program already in progress,” message and just having to accept that you’ve missed the first however many minutes football ate into your favorite show and spending the episode trying to play catchup with what’s going on.

Movies

Starship Troopers

Over the years I’ve written a lot about the movie Starship Troopers. Probably too much for a movie that upon its release was denounced by most and quickly forgotten. Over the years there has been a bit of appreciation for Starship Troopers develop, but not as much as I’d thought there would’ve been when I saw it 20 years ago.

Still, I can’t deny how much I adore Starship Troopers or how much I love watching it even today. So here are a few links to articles I’ve written over the years about Starship Troopers.

The Reading & Watch List

This week in pop-culture history

  • 1932: Roy Scheider of JAWS and SeaQuest DSV is born
  • 1949: Armin Shimerman, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Quark of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is born
  • 1964: Robert Duncan McNeill, Tom Paris of Star Trek: Voyager is born
  • 1969: Marooned premiers
  • 1970: Ethan Hawke of Explorers and Gattaca is born
  • 1973: Radha Mitchell, Fry of Pitch Black is born
  • 1975: The TV series The New Adventures of Wonder Woman debuts
  • 1993: RoboCop 3 opens in theaters
  • 1994: The TV series Earth 2 premiers
  • 1997: Starship Troopers premiers

Thor: Even the god of thunder isn’t cool enough to lead the Avengers

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The Marvel character of Thor is pretty interesting. He’s quite literally the Norse “God of Thunder” with all the supernatural powers of controlling lighting, being immortal and all the other fun stuff that comes from being a god. In fact, with his mystical hammer that gives him even more powers like flight and being an all-around tougher guy than the normal dude, he’s practically unbeatable by the regular Marvel comic villains.

Chris Hemsworth
Chris Hemsworth

Which is why I find it interesting that while Thor might be one of the most powerful Marvel heroes ever, he’s not the leader of the super-powered super-friends force of The Avengers.

In the movies at least, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is a heavy hitter, called in when the right people need to be punched really hard or when his brother Loki somehow finds his way to the Earth to cause trouble. Otherwise, he’s off on his own doing things in other parts of the galaxy/reality plains. His first movie Thor (2011) was mostly about him becoming a responsible adult and leader, with his younger self being apt to fly off the handle at the smallest slight or attack great armies on his own armed with not much more than his fists, a few of his friends and bravado. The next movie Thor: The Dark World (2013) had him fighting the Dark Elves who wanted to take over Thor’s home of Asgard and the Earth too.

In these movies Thor grows as an individual as he’s next in line for the throne of Asgard, turning from self-centered party-boy to a real leader who thinks of others first over his own safety. And while Thor doesn’t ever quite become that leader of Asgard — his brother Loki tricks everyone into him taking the reigns — it’s obvious that if he were ever called Thor would be a great leader.

So why is it if he’s ready to lead Asgard he’s not ready to lead The Avengers?

Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo
Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo

First of all, in the The Avengers (2012) there really wasn’t an The Avengers per se, as much as the movie was about the formation of that super-group. And even with the next Avengers 2: Age of Ultron you really get the feeling that Thor’s got other things on his mind — like the people of Asgard. And it’s hard to beat the leadership qualities of someone like Captain America who’s quite literally a “super soldier” and is a natural great leader of men and women in the times of crisis the Avengers always seem to find themselves in.

Still, if Thor’s not the leader of The Avengers he does play a very important role in the team. Okay, two roles, next to someone like The Incredible Hulk he’s the best at punching the baddies really, really hard.

Jeff Goldblum and Tessa Thompson
Jeff Goldblum and Tessa Thompson

His main role is to tie the entire Marvel film universe together. Much of the modern Marvel movie mythos is centered around things like “Cosmic Cubes” and the “Infinity Gems.” All these mystical things grant the possessor different powers like unlimited energy sources for super-weapons to the ability to control minds to name a few. So in the movies the bad guys want these things while the good guys are trying to keep them out of the wrong hands.

And the one guy who has actual knowledge of what these things are and what they can do, and is therefore really interested in keeping them away from the bad guys, is Thor. In fact, many of the most dangerous items are collected and housed in a vault on Asgard, though even these tend to fall into the wrong hands from time to time.

Now comes another Thor movie, Thor: Ragnarok out now. This time a beaten Thor is cast to the planet Sakaar after Asgard is invaded and overthrown by the evil Hela (Cate Blanchett) who, I would assume, would want to get at whatever’s in those vaults. Directed by Taika Waititi who also had a hand in the oh-so-brilliant What We Do in the Shadows, Thor: Ragnarok looks to be a lot of fun with Thor alternatively having to fight gladiator-style with likes of The Incredible Hulk while at the same time teaming up with them to try and defeat Hela.

Direct Beam Comms #99

CategoriesComic Books, Direct Beam Comms, Feature, Toys, TVPosted on

TV

Stranger Things

These days, with how fragmented pop-culture has become, pop-cultural phenomenas are pretty rare. It used to be that once or twice a year some song, TV series or film would become a touchstone that would become a national focus for a time before we all moved onto something else. But with how pop-culture has become so expansive over the last decade with 400 new scripted TV series premiering every year, music for every taste existing in very specific channels, dozens of mega-budget movies being released each year and now competition from the likes of smart phone apps and social media — it makes for a landscape where it’s practically impossible for some pop-culture thing to break out of its specific marketing silo to phenomena status.

To me a “cultural phenomena” is some movie, TV series or song that practically everyone is aware of, even if they may have not ever seen or heard it. In the 1990s I was aware of the series Seinfeld, knew what channel it was on and what actors were involved even if I didn’t start watching it until the show was in syndication years after it became popular. And that goes for a lot of TV series that are cultural phenomena these days too. I’d say series like Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead are phenomena in that I’d assume just about anyone who watches TV on a regular basis is aware of these two shows, even if many people have never actually watched an episode of them.

So, in a TV landscape where there are literally hundreds upon hundreds of scripted and non-scripted TV series airing each week I’d say those two are only two shows that I’d think would be considered “pop-culture phenomena.” Well, actually, I think there’s now three with Stranger Things joining the cultural phenomena ranks last year with its breakout TV season everyone’s still talking about.

Before the first season of Stranger Things debuted on Netflix the summer of 2016 most of the talk online about the show was how much it looked like the works of Steven Spielberg. And not all in a good way. I got the sense that most people thought Stranger Things was going to be derivative and dull and were counting it out before a single episode streamed. But once the episodes debuted and the reviews started coming in things changed for the show. What was about to be written off as a lame attempt by Netflix creating a show about the 1980s for the nostalgia set became something that appealed to both those who were fans of the sci-fi and horror genera, those interested in nostalgia and those interested in great TV too.

What I think works best about the first season of Stranger Things, where kids from a small Indiana town uncover a conspiracy when one of their own goes missing and another kid appears out of nowhere, was the story. It’s cool that Stranger Things is set in this nostalgia friendly early 1980s, but the story of Stranger Things works no matter where/what time it’s set. Set Stranger Things present day in Florida and the story would still work.

And that’s why I was so excited to see the return of this show — to get back into the story of Stranger Things that has a palpable sense of mystery and danger and to find out what everyone’s been up to the last year after the devastating events at the end of the first season of the series.

In the second season, it’s about a year after the first and everything’s returned to normal in Hawkins. Well, mostly everything. Will’s (Noah Schnapp) returned to the fold except he’s still experiencing visions from the “upside down” where he was most of the first season, Mike’s (Finn Wolfhard) grades are falling since he’s still trying to find Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and Nancy’s (Natalia Dyer) dealing with her friend Barb’s parents who’re selling their house to pay for a detective to search for her.

What I found most interest gin in the show is that the characters are paying the consequences from the first. Be it Will being rescued, but now being called “zombie boy” by kids who are scared of him, Mike’s life being turned around from everything he went through or even Sheriff Hopper (David Harbour) finding that while things around Hawkins have been pretty normal, it’s about to get a lot less so.

In Stranger Things, for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction and just because the kids of Hawkins drove the evil out doesn’t mean that a greater one isn’t going to try and get back in and is stronger than ever.

Comics

Night Force by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan: The Complete Series

One comic series that I’m totally unfamiliar with that sounds amazing is Night Force. This comic series began in the early 1980s and lasted a measly 14 issues before being cancelled. I’m assuming that since the series was out just before I started collecting comics, and since it was so limited, that’s why I never saw it in the 25¢ comic bins at the flea markets or antique shops I used to frequent. Of course, it could also be that at the time of the 25¢ back issue comics I was too busy hunting for an Incredible Hulk #181, The Amazing Spider-Man #129 or Iron Fist #14 to notice something as interesting sounding as Night Force.

One thing — the collected editions of this series go for between $30 and $40 for paperback and hardback cover respectively, but you can find complete runs of the original comics on eBay for less than $20 shipped.

From DC:

The creative team behind Tomb of Dracula reunited in 1982 for DC’s NIGHT FORCE! The series begins as the mysterious sorcerer Baron Winter assembles a team to take on an occult evil. But can the granddaughter of Dracula’s greatest foe, a powerful parapsychologist, and a timelost warrior from the court of King David tackle these threats?

Toys

Alien 3 Dog Alien Maquette

The Prime 1 Studio and CoolProps Alien 3 monster looks amazing. From the sickly brown color to its translucent dome and swappable heads with mouth closed and open, this statue stands more than two feet tall and certainly one to own. Unfortunately, “amazing” comes with a steep price as this item is set to retail for nearly $1,700.

The Reading & Watch List

This week in pop-culture history

  • 1954: Godzilla opens in Japan
  • 1961: Peter Jackson, director of King Kong, The Frighteners and The Lord of the Rings films is born
  • 1988: They Live premiers
  • 2002: *28 Days Later…” Premiers
  • 2009: The TV series V premiers
  • 2010: The first episode of The Walking Dead airs